Dealing with a Junior Following a Loss

Hello again Ontario Pros and anyone else interested in tennis!  Welcome to “Opening Volley” – a blog dedicated to the pros of Ontario. The OTA invites TPA accredited pros to host our blog throughout the year and will invite them… and you…. to create a dialogue surrounding the issues, challenges and triumphs associated with teaching, and learning, tennis. Our first guest host Alastair Miller lead a great discussion about Progressive Tennis – thanks Al and keep on visiting! Our next host is Tim Hazell, Head Pro at Cutten Fields in Guelph. Tim would like to hear from you about how to deal with a junior player after they have played in a tournament, particularly after a loss. It is an important part of a tournament player’s development.

Here is his “Opening Volley”:

Dealing with a Junior Following a Loss

The past 5 years, my club has had the opportunity to host OTA junior tournaments on an almost weekly basis. After a win, the post match conversation between coach and player is not always as crucial. But when your player has lost or has played poorly, the post match discussion is much more important in the player’s future development. I hope to share some insight on ways that I feel you can actually help a player improve just by having a good post match discussion following a loss.

It is important to realize that a junior player is under an extreme amount of pressure when competing in a tournament match (some more than others). The work, the money, and the time that goes into preparation, are things that most juniors do understand and appreciate. While in a team sport you must depend on your teammates, a tennis player feels a great deal of independence during a match.

Welcome to Opening Volley: Let’s talk about…

Hello Ontario Pros!!!  Welcome to “Opening Volley” – a blog dedicated to the pros of Ontario. The OTA will be inviting TPA accredited pros to host our blog throughout the year and will invite them… and you…. to create a dialogue surrounding the issues, challenges and triumphs associated with teaching, and learning, tennis. Our first guest host Alastair Miller is the Head Pro at Davisville Tennis Club in Toronto and also teaches at the Boulevard Club in Toronto. A TPA certified Club Professional 2 and Club Pro 1, Al has extensive  experience teaching kids and also enjoys playing the game at a competitive level. With this entry, Al wants to elicit discussion about the merits of “Progressive Tennis”. Here is his “Opening Volley”:

Is Progressive Tennis Progressive?

Hello to all fellow pros and anyone else who has an interest in playing and talking about tennis. I would like to begin the very first “Opening Volley” blog entry with a discussion about the merits of utilizing Progressive Tennis as an approach to teaching young players who are new to the game. For those of you who don’t know, Progressive Tennis uses a systematic progression of court sizes, balls and racquets to scale the game down to an appropriate level for 5 to 10 year olds. The theory behind the Progressive Tennis approach is that it allows kids to learn to play quickly and successfully. Endorsed and taught to instructors by Tennis Canada, it has been used in Europe for many years and is gaining increasing credibility in Canada as well. It is recommended that a game-based approach be used when teaching Progressive Tennis. For more information on Progressive Tennis visit the Tennis Canada website: www.lovemeansnothing.ca and click “Tennis For Kids” at the bottom of the home page.

With that in mind… let me set the scene:

This past spring, as I was approaching my second season as the head pro at Davisville Tennis Club, my staff and I were looking forward to continuing to work with new and returning juniors from the area. We had 35 kids between the ages of 4 and 7 in our spring After School programme which ran three days a week between May and June.

With 8 weeks to work with these young players we were committed to seeing how many kids we could get to graduate from the Progressive Tennis, Mini Red Level One curriculum. At end of the spring session, all of our 35 kids seemed to have had a great time and all met the requirements for the first stage of Progressive Tennis. With the success of our juniors in this spring session, I was expecting a large percentage of them to enroll in our summer tennis camps. Much to my disappointment, only 5 of them continued their tennis into the summer. We scratched our heads a bit and wondered if we were missing something in our approach. Obviously, there are a number of possible reasons for a lower than expected retention rate; vacation plans, other interests, cost, etc., but even so, I thought it would have been higher.

When summer camp began, my staff and I used a mixture of Progressive Tennis drills and the old classic court games that would make any course facilitators cringe. Happily, our summer camps saw 85 percent of kids re-register for an additional week after their first week of camp. Again, there are probably a variety of reasons why this might have occurred but we wondered if the “mixed approach” might be a more effective way to keep the kids interested in tennis. We have been assured that Progressive Tennis is best way to develop junior talent but my “Opening Volley” question is:

 What is the best method for keeping kids involved in tennis..?